9c> ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF 



moriia : while in fat, oil, and other fluids, that contain little or no oxygene^ 

 and consist altogether, or nearly so, of hydrogene and carbone, seeds may 

 be confined for ages without exhibiting any germination whatever. And 

 hence, again, and the fact deserves to be extensively known, however tor- 

 pid a seed may be, and destitute of all power to vegetate in any other sub- 

 stance if steeped in a diluted solution of oxygenated muriatic acid, at a 

 temperature of about 46° or 48° of Fahrenheit, provided it still possess its 

 principle of vitality it will germinate in a few hours. And if, after this, it 

 be planted, as it ought to be, in its appropriate soil, it will grow with ass 

 much speed and vigour as if it had evinced no torpitude whatever. 



I have said that few plants can be made to germinate when the oxygene 

 is small in quantity, and the hydrogene abundant : and I have made the 

 limitation, because aquatic plants, and such as grow in marshes, and other 

 moist places, are remarkable, not only for parting with a large quantity of 

 oxygene gas, but also for absorbing hydrogene gar? freely ; and are hence 

 pecuUarly calculated for purifying the regions in which they flourish, and 

 in some sort for correcting the mischief that flows from the decomposition 

 of the dead vegetable and animal materials that is perpetually takmg place 

 in such situations, and loading the atmosphere with febrile and other 

 miasms. 



But the instances of resemblance between animal and vegetable physio- 

 logy are innumerable. Some plants, like a few of our birds, more of our 

 insects, and almost all our forest beasts, appear to sleep through the day, 

 and to awake and become active at night ; while the greater number, like 

 the greater number of animals, resign themselves to sleep at sunset, and 

 awake re-invigorated with the dawn. Like animals, they all feel the living 

 power excited by small degrees of electricity, but destroyed by severe 

 shocks ; and like animals, too, they differ in a very extraordinary degree in 

 the duration of many of their species. Some tribes of boletus unfold them- 

 selves in a few hours, like the ephemera and hemerobius tribes (May-fly 

 and Spring-fly), and as speedily decay. Several of the fungi live only a 

 few days ; others weeks or months. Annual plants, like the greater part 

 of our insects, live three, four, or even eight months. Biennial plants, like 

 the longer-lived insects, and most of our shell-fishes, continue alive sixteen, 

 eighteen, or even twenty-four months. Many of the herbaceous plants 

 continue only a few years, but more for a longer period, and imitate all the 

 variety to be met with in the greater number of birds, quadrupeds, and 

 fishes ; while shrubs and trees are, for the most part, coequal with the age 

 of man, and a few of them equal that allotted to him in the earliest periods 

 of the world. Of these last, the Adansonia digitata, or calabash tree, is 

 perhaps one of the most extraordinary. Indigenous to the land of the 

 patriarchs, and still outrivalling the patriarchal age, this stupendous tree, 

 compared with which our own giant oak, in bulk as well as in years, is but 

 an infant, seems to require not less than a thousand years to give it full 

 vigour and maturity. Extending its enormous arms over the dry and bar- 

 ren soil from which it shoots naturally, it aflfords shelter to whole nations 

 of barbarians, and on its pleasant subacid fruit administers an ample supply 

 to their hunger. 



Let it not, however, be imagined that, by pointing out such frequent 

 instances of resemblance between animal and vegetable life, I mean to 

 degrade the rank of animal being from its proper level ; for it will be one 

 of the chiefobjectsof our subsequent studies to develope and delineate its 

 multiform and characteristic superiorities. I am only tracing at present 



